Save the date!

Things always get so busy in June with graduations and weddings that you might want to put this on your calendar Right Now: Saturday, June 4, is this year's Home & Garden Day, which as always benefits children's and literacy programs at the Bayard Taylor Memorial Library.
"The focus will be the southeastern corner of Chester County and a sliver of Delaware," reports Stefanie Jackson, who is a member of the Library's Special Events Committee, which always does such a splendid job organizing this marvelous tour.
More details will be available soon -- in fact, Stefanie is busy preparing the tour program -- but I wanted to let you know the date as soon as I could.

Border line

The other morning some friends were discussing what they've dubbed "the Great Wall of Kennett," and I just had to drive by on the way home and see it for myself. It's a VERY long (and doubtless VERY expensive) stone wall that somebody's building along the east side of Mill Road, across from Dr. Kenneth Barnsley's Kennett Square Veterinary Hospital. The photo shows only a small portion of it, sitting at the crest of the steep roadbank.

Apparently the construction work has been going on for months, and in all weather. It ends at the farm's barn, where you can see the stone pieces being affixed to the wall.

Anticipating spring

The next time you are on Route 926 near New Bolton, check out the deep-green grass-like stems sprouting along the sides of the road. It's a wonderful perennial called Star of Bethlehem (Ornithogalum umbellatum), and it spreads like crazy. In the next couple of weeks each plant will be sending up its flower stalk, and there will be a beautiful sea of white flowers.
And don't miss the striking yellow-brown color of willow and forsythia branches, just getting ready to sprout. The color is so distinctive against the still-brown late-winter fields.
I haven't heard the pond peepers quite yet, even though I was outside at dusk today with my head cocked toward the marsh, listening really hard, like the Grinch on Christmas morning.

Flood alert

What a storm! The heavy rain and howling winds that swept through our area last Thursday sent the Brandywine over its banks at Pocopson, Chadds Ford and Northbrook, closing Unionville schools on Friday. (My ear-to-the-ground sister-in-law knew about the school closing even before it hit cyberspace -- well done!)
Here in West Marlborough, Doe Run flooded across Route 82, detouring motorists up Wilson Road, where a big tree had toppled across the road. The spillway at Rokeby Mill held, though water was still pouring over the waterfall well into Friday afternoon. The two ponds at the Stone Barn on Upland Road merged for a while. Downed branches littered Routes 82 and 926, and there were stubborn power outages throughout our community.
One friend who lives in Marshalton had to cross the Brandywine to join me and a few others at a breakfast meeting at the Country Butcher's Cafe in Kennett on Friday morning. Northbrook was flooded ("absolute whitecaps," she said), but she was able to get across at Embreeville.

Constituent service

As something of a local-government junkie (which I don't need to tell my regular readers!) I greatly appreciate what I call "The Blue Book" -- the resident's guide that State Rep. Chris Ross sends out each year. It's got heaps of useful information about local government: names, e-mail addresses, websites, phone numbers, and so forth. And, amazingly, I have yet to find an error in it.
There aren't many actual hard-copy publications on my once-crowded reference shelf anymore, since so much information is available online, but The Blue Book is still one of them.

A hearty appetite

Tilda and two dear friends, a married couple, were ordering breakfast at Longwood Family Restaurant on Sunday.
Husband: "I'll have an omelette, with mushrooms, onions, peppers, Cheddar cheese, bacon, sausage--"
Wife: "Uh . . . Honey?"
Husband: "OK. No sausage."

Adios, Lindo

Say good-bye to Cafe Lindo, the coffeeshop on Broad Street between Cypress and State Streets in Kennett. Its last day was Saturday, March 5, and the windows were now covered with brown paper.
A letter on the door from "Cafe Management" announces the closing and thanks customers for their patronage.
It's a good thing a friend e-mailed me the news; otherwise I would've showed up for a committee meeting that was scheduled there.
It was a nice, bright space to meet a friend or two for coffee, and it was right there on a main street so you could see folks walking by. I'll miss the place. It was the second coffeeshop to occupy that location in the past few years.